Keeping Seven

by T. A Richards Neville

  Dressed in my suit, I left the locker room, the earbuds I wore serving to hold back any staff wandering around the stadium.

  Angela Valentina, beat reporter for the team, took no notice of the barrier or the standoffish mask I’d pulled in place. Heading straight for me, she reached up a hand and tugged out my right earbud. She carried on walking with me, her overblown smile the opposite to my rigid exterior.

  “Bad with hints, huh?”

  Angela laughed. “Oh, you’re nothing but a teddy bear. A big, old, mean teddy bear.”

  Outside the stadium, the usual crowd waited for me, and I signed every jersey, autograph book and miscellaneous item that was shoved in front of me. As time consuming as that was, Angela stood rooted to the ground until I was finished, acting as my shadow as I walked to my car.

  “You’ve been making headlines, Julian.”

  “I don’t read the headlines.”

  “Then may I suggest you start. Can we go someplace? This isnt a story that will go away on its own. You’re going to need damage control. And me. I’m available now for the next hour, give or take,” Angela said, glancing at her gold watch.

  I unlocked the Range Rover. “Get in.”

  I drove us to a Columbian coffee shop and bakery about three miles from the stadium. I ordered coffee and a water while Angela faffed on her with her iPad. I carried the steaming coffee cup and my glass to the table, parking my ass in the wooden chair with unstable legs. As long as I didn’t move, or breathe too deeply, I wouldn’t end up on the floor.

  Way off the tourist grid, the coffee shop was only identifiable if you lived locally and had heard from someone else that the place even existed at all. So, perfect for people like me to take an hour or two out and not have to waste hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to sneak in through the back door of the busiest, most pretentious establishments in Miami, where more often than not, paps and fans waited outside for you anyway, an inside blabbermouth tipping off A to Z in their phonebook.

  “Do you know her? Like beyond whether she’s shaved her legs.” Angela handed me the iPad over the table.

  The woman from Nikki Beach had gone to the trouble of uploading a video to what must be her YouTube channel, her subscribers topping three-hundred thousand. Positioned in front of a camera at home in full makeup and a siren-red pushup bandeau top, I listened to my name spew from her lips in a plot-based string of lies. I read the title of the fraudulent video. “My passionate night with Julian Lawson?” I said to Angela. “This never happened.”

  “Didn’t think so. But Alexis Javine is a social media influencer whose subscribers are growing by the hour thanks to a little servicing from you. The pictures of you and her that night back up her claims. She must have had someone else taking pictures and video on the DL. You’ve dropped the ball, Julian.”

  Right on cue, my phone rang. Caller ID identified Scott, and I sent him to voicemail for now. “So, what do I do? She’s not getting away with this. It’s slander.” I lowered my voice, awareness over the staff triggering my self-preservation and what was left of my humility. “I want the video taken down. Today.”

  “You know what else you need besides that good-for-nothing agent with dollar signs in his eyes? You need a manager. You’ve taken care of yourself for long enough now. Let someone who knows what they’re actually doing take over so you can concentrate on what the Dolphins pay you for.”

  In the midst of the scandal I’d just found out I was in the middle of, I laughed. “You? You’re a reporter.”

  “I have my bachelor’s in sports management. I could help you, Julian. I want to help you. Think about it for a minute. You already know me, and I’m very aware of the stigma surrounding you and all the other NFL players. Bitches like her”—Angela tapped a fingernail on the iPad screen, over Alexis’s nonstop mouth—“don’t come in ones. More will follow. You handle your career and I handle you. You know it makes sense.”

  “I’ll need time to think about it, Angela.” She did make sense, but my agent caused me enough grief, and so had Angela in the past. My head was screwed on and I knew a good deal from a bad deal. Adding a manager into the mix hadn’t been an endeavor I’d liked the sound of. Not then and not now. But this Alexis chick telling the whole of fucking YouTube how we humped like rabbits all night in the realm of her fucking dreams boiled my blood. She was tainting my name, and my reputation wasn’t up for messing with.

  “Can you get me her Insta handle? Phone number? E-mail?”

  “Sure.” Angela nodded.

  “Okay. Do that and we’ll talk about you managing me once I’ve spoken to this idiot and found out what the fuck she’s playing at.”

  “Julian!” Rebecca screeched.

  “What?” I shouted from upstairs.

  “Your mom’s downstairs?”

  What?

  Dropping the towel I was just scrubbing my short hair with in the hamper, I pulled up the waistband on my shorts and jogged downstairs.

  Rebecca held the door open as I crossed the living room. “It’s definitely her,” she said, her puzzled expression mirroring my own.

  The elevator dinged in the hallway, and my mom stepped out. She wheeled a small suitcase in front of her, no smile even when she saw me in the doorway.

  “Did you say you were coming?” I asked with a frown. Missing that announcement was likely, taking into account the horizontal slope I was plummeting down.

  “I did not.” She walked right by me, creating a narrow opening between me and the doorframe for her to squeeze her body and luggage through. Rebecca and I exchanged another look, her gaze wandering from me to my mom, who rolled her luggage to the stairs and then picked the suitcase up, carrying it to the second floor.

  “I’ll leave you guys alone. Do we need anything from the store?”

  I spread my palm over my mouth and jaw and shook my head. “Take my credit card and get whatever you want. It’s in my bag there.”

  Crouching in front of my duffel bag by the door, Rebecca slid the credit card from my wallet, called for Dog, and took him with her.

  “Mom!” I didn’t feel like going up there. It had been three days since the cheating allegations, and if my mom was here to confront me about it, flying all the way out here to do it seemed an extreme route to go down.

  There was an echoing clatter, and then I looked up when I heard her footsteps cross my bedroom floor and start for the stairs. There was no hiding in this condo. You could see my bedroom from the living room, and vice versa. So she could be pissed up there, but she wasn’t getting any privacy for it.

  Topping out at five-two, Olivia Astor was a tiny excuse for a human being. She was also the only person, apart from Angel—and for vastly different reasons—who genuinely terrified me. Sitting herself on the sectional, she looked more like she’d come from the office rather than a three-and-a-half-hour flight. There was something off about her being here.

  A burst of alarm torpedoed through my spine. “Where’s Taj?”

  “With your dad,” she said, not missing a single beat. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the hostility she’d bombarded in here with shattered around her, the rigid lining of her face relaxing as her lip quivered and tears filled her eyes. “Julian… what have I done?”

  “I don’t know. What have you done?” My eyes remained on her as I walked to the couch, sitting on the adjacent footstool facing her. Practice had been grueling today, and my guess was, I was too tired and mentally drained for whatever was heading my way. Ever day now was like facing a firing squad. Every fucker out there versus me.

  Her tear flow wasn’t giving up, and I went to the kitchen, digging around in the drawers for a pack of Kleenex. I brought one back that’d already been opened and dropped it into my mom’s lap. Even though I didn’t like what I was seeing, my sympathy hovered on standby, until it had a valid, justified reason to show itself.

  “Your dad wants to come home. He’s leaving Susan.”

  Yeah, that stand
by had just gone into confirmed cancellation.

  “He is home,” I practically snarled. “With his wife and his fucking kid. He hasn’t got another home. And I sure as shit didn’t buy that house for him to move his stupid ass in. I know what the two of you have been doing, and after I called him out on it, I thought he’d leave you the hell alone. How come I’m always fucking surprised by his arrogance?”

  “How do you know?” Mom pulled a tissue from the pack, dabbing her streaming eyes with it. This scene was my childhood all over again, only this time I was big enough to beat the motherfucker and end up in prison over it. And my dad was the type of coward who’d call the feds instead of fighting back. He was showing his coward now. Walking out on his family—again—and wanting back into his old one. Why couldn’t the douchesack just get the snip and do the world a fucking favor?

  “I saw you kissing, and then when I asked him about it, he didn’t hold back on corroborating my story.”

  “I never planned for this to happen.”

  “But you let it anyway? He’s going to build you up and tear you down just like he did back then. He’s bored with what he’s got now, and he’ll get bored with you. The man’s allergic to responsibility. Does Gary know you’ve been stepping out on him?”

  “We haven’t slept together.” My mom scolded me with a cold look, like I was the one in the wrong. But even I had my limits, and homewrecker was one of them. Juggling more than one woman was just a riskier form of ego stroking.

  “Listen.” I leaned in, getting through to her all I cared about for now. “He left us once, and he’ll do it again. And if you don’t stop him, you’re going to end up with no one. Taj is getting older, I’m not in Boston anymore, and Gary will be out of there faster than Usain Bolt. What was Dad’s legitimate reason for leaving the first time? It was what I did to Taj, wasn’t it?”

  “That was an accident,” Mom said, sailing headfirst over the point I was trying to drill home. “It was too much for him to deal with, but that wasn’t your fault.”

  It was my fault, but whatever. Moving on… Rather she stayed stuck on him leaving through me than be told it was a convenient excuse to dip into bed with a less complicated woman and start his second-chance, untarnished family from the ground up.

  “I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m your son. Tell me he loves you more than I do, and I’ll step back and stay out of it. I won’t cause either of you any problems. Tell me he cares about you half as much as I care about you. Tell me, right now, to my face, that he won’t crush you. You remember how much it hurt the day he left? The years that came after it? Can you do that to Susan? Because if anyone had asked me, I’d say no fucking way.”

  “If I could stop loving him, I would do it tomorrow. He left me. I was still happily married.”

  “No, Mom.” It wasn’t easy saying it, but she needed to hear it. “He left us. You, me, Taj. You might still be gaga over him, but I’m tired of his shit. If you can’t be strong for Taj, do it for yourself. If he gets away with this…” Fuck. I was on fire inside. “You can’t be happy with Gary? Leave him if that’s the case. Be alone. You’ve got a house, a job, a nice car. He isn’t satisfying you, then get rid. It’s that easy. Get out of Boston and stay with me. Just please, don’t go back to him.”

  I let her cry, her lack of anything to say as worrying as it was comforting. She cleaned herself up in the bathroom, and I crept up after her and sat on my bed, listening for the tears making a louder return.

  They didn’t, and when she opened the door, emerging from the bathroom, I stood up. She walked toward me with heavy footsteps, the life draining out of her with every strained breath and slow, heavy-lidded blink. I pulled her into my arms and hoped she’d received the message that I was here for her.

  Later, I would call my dad and deliver him his own message. I’d told my mom I couldn’t tell her what to do, but I had no problem telling him.

  “S o this is where you spend all your time now.”

  I whirled around from my open car door, narrowly avoiding smacking my head on the interior frame. I stood bent over the driver’s seat, where I’d been searching the middle compartment for my misplaced phone, so I could double check my schedule and see whether I’d been stood up or I’d set my one-on-one for the wrong date or time.

  My eyes must have been playing a sick trick on me, because Julian stood behind me in the empty parking space next to mine. It took a good five or six seconds to accept that it was really him, and the glaring sun in the clear blue sky wasn’t just throwing lifelike shadows, my complicated mind projecting fantasies into solid, physical form.

  I withdrew from the car, forgetting all about my phone and the last half hour I’d wasted waiting for my student who hadn’t turned up. “How are you here?”

  “Plane. Technology nowadays, huh?”

  I studied him in front of me, overcome with how badly I wanted to throw myself at him while rooted to the ground, festering resentment from our argument refusing me to go anywhere near him.

  “You look pissed. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say your appointment left you hanging out to dry. Who was it?”

  Who was it? As slow realization crept in, I ducked back inside my car, locating my cell phone under the passenger seat. Opening my calendar, the initials J.L had been attached to the eleven-a.m. slot.

  “Julian Lawson,” I said to myself, turning back around. “Figures you’d do this to me. The easy way doesn’t work for you, does it? My time’s precious, and you just wasted it.”

  “Not intentional. I got delayed at Miami. I’m on a flight back out of here in a few hours, so that doesn’t leave me with much time to do what I came here for.”

  “And what are you here for?” Resisting closing the distance and pressing myself up against Julian’s hard body worsened by the second. I held strong, though. Even if it that strength had an expiration of one whole minute.

  “To tell you that you should take the job with the Junior Kings.”

  Okay… what?

  “Why the sudden three-sixty?”

  Julian glanced around the parking lot before his eyes came back to rest on me. “I took a cab here. Can you believe that? How about you let me in that matchbox you call a car and I’ll buy you breakfast?”

  I agreed out of the sheer fact it was a Tuesday, Julian’s only day off. But day off or not, he was meant to be in Miami, and I wondered if his coach was wise to what Julian was up to. There was also no use in making his time here more difficult, since it was so limited, and he’d be on another flight before the day was over.

  He got in the car, contorting his long, muscled body into the passenger seat. I parked in a metered space along the curb outside the restaurant on Wilshire and fed change from my cup holder into the machine, covering us for at least two hours.

  After we’d been seated at a table booth and given menus, I ordered orange juice and Julian settled on water. I looked out the window of the Mexican breakfast spot, pretending like I was interested in the people strolling along the sidewalk. “That was low, siccing Scott on me. You know how I feel about him. He called me Angel Rivers.”

  “That was low you agreeing to do it, Rivers.”

  A disobedient smile curled my lips. That was how in tune Julian was to me. My motives were transparent, and he’d read me like a kindergarten-level book. “That’s what you get for giving him my phone number.”

  We traded looks, the energy-charged air surrounding us bringing me out in fresh goose bumps. Julian’s eyes were no joke. One look into them held the power of me forgetting what I was so mad about. If only I possessed that level of control. I could rule the world, or at least a generous chunk of people in it. As far as I was aware, Julian never relied on his looks to get him by, but he was no fool. He couldn’t not know how his physical appearance affected others.

  I powered my brain into gear and hacked through the sexual tension.

  Time and place, Angel.

  “So, a big wedding?” It couldn’
t be his first choice. I was a bit of a lone wolf, but Julian was just unsociable. I’d believed him when he’d said his proposal had been on a whim that felt right. An orchestrated wedding with thirty cameras on us was both our ideas of hell. And behind the scenes we were not okay. Our line was so frayed we were in danger of it snapping completely. To know all that and then paste on a smile and a show for our families and Julian’s fans? I didn’t want to do it. When I married Julian, it would have more meaning than several million extra dollars in the bank.

  “Forget the wedding. I would marry you now at City Hall. But I’m not going to do that to you while you’ve got the chance to do something for yourself. I’ve got my mom hiding out at my place in tears over my dad threatening to leave Susan so he can nestle back into the life he tossed down the drain. While she’s been there, all I can think about is the ultimatum I’d slapped you with. I’m sitting there like a jackass telling my mom she doesn’t need a man to make her happy. That she should leave Gary if shit’s so bad she’s been pushed into my dad’s arms, the cheating bastard. And then it just hit me—”

  Our waiter placed two glasses of water and my orange juice on the table, asking if we were ready to order.

  “Ten more minutes,” I said with a smile. “Thank you.”

  Julian drained a quarter of his iced water and sat back in the wooden booth. “You don’t need a man, either. You’ve got everything she has and more. You’re talented as fuck and you can’t turn down this job. Moving in with me isn’t the right reason. It’s no fucking reason at all.”

  “I already told them no.”

  “Is it too late to reconsider? Jesus, call Beau if you have to.”

  “If I stay here, will there be more like Alexis announcing to the internet that she’s slept with you? Is that what I’ve got to look forward to? Or should I come to Miami and have this rubbed in my face by those other women who I thought hated me, but actually, they’re just dealing with the same nonsense I am. No wonder they’re so bitter. Is that what’s in store for me?” Because my skin wasn’t thick enough to sustain all that damage. I’d built up no tolerance for it.